Singer Kehlani says she is “disheartened” by the LGBT community’s negative reaction to her pregnancy announcement last month.
In October, the 23-year-old revealed she had a baby on the way with a member of her band, guitarist Javie Young-White, who is bisexual.
Kehlani tells Nylon magazine that many of her LGBT fans accused her of lying about her sexuality to align herself with the LGBT community for financial reasons.
READ ALSO: Bi Singer Kehlani Reveals Bisexual Father of Her Unborn Baby
“I’ve gotten everything from, ‘I thought she was a lesbian’, to, ‘She was using queerness to promote her career, then went and betrayed us with a man’, to, ‘Her baby father is just a sperm donor’,” the singer tells Nylon magazine. “I never identified as a lesbian. I’ve always been pansexual. My first mixtape included songs about males, and songs about women.”
She added:
“I never woke up and decided to be the ‘queer icon’ of the century. Having so much attention on me outside my art already gives me enough anxiety. There are people out there in this community fighting for equality in realer ways than making songs about it and performing at events like I am.”
Stars like Kehlani are accused of being ghey for pay — a derogatory term for heterosexuals who pretend to be ghey (or ghey aligned) in order to benefit financially from the ghey community.
These people often use ambiguous, vague or made up terms to describe their sexuality, such as “pansexual” “bicurious” or “trysexual.”
Other stars who are accused of being ghey for pay include Janelle Monáe, Tessa Thompson, Lindsay Lohan, Monica Brown, Bow Wow’s ex-girlfriend Kiyomi Leslie, and more.
